Plumbers in Brighton & Allston

Renting here: what the owner has to keep working

Census estimates for 2020-2024 count roughly 9,000 homes in Allston's ZIP code, 02134, and 22,400 in Brighton's, 02135. Just 12.8% of Allston homes and 23.3% of Brighton's are owner-occupied, compared with about 36% across Boston.

For the renters who make up the rest, the Massachusetts State Sanitary Code (105 CMR 410) puts plumbing on the owner. A landlord must keep the plumbing and fixtures in working order and supply hot water at a temperature between 110°F and 130°F. If a sink is backing up, a toilet won't stop running or the shower has gone cold, report it to the landlord or property manager and keep a record of when you did; hiring the plumber is generally the owner's job.

When a repair doesn't happen, Boston tenants can ask the city's Inspectional Services Department to inspect the unit by contacting 311, by phone or at 311.boston.gov. For owners, the same code means a unit without working hot water or a usable toilet is a code problem, not a request that can wait.

September 1, apartment blocks and old Victorians

Many Greater Boston leases end around September 1, and the mass move that follows is known locally as "Allston Christmas." For owners with several units, that compresses a year of turnover into a few days. Checking drains, toilets, faucets and water heaters in August, while units are empty, is easier than fixing them with new tenants moving in. If you are the one moving in, run the hot water and every fixture on the first day and report anything wrong right away.

Building size shapes the problem as well. In Allston, 31% of homes are in buildings of 5 to 19 units and 38% in buildings of 20 or more; Brighton has 36% in buildings of 20-plus units, alongside two-families (15%) and three- and four-unit houses (14%). In a large building, a leak or clog in one apartment often starts in a shared riser or stack, which makes it management's call, not the tenant's.

The buildings are old, too. About half of Allston's homes (49%) and 39% of Brighton's were built in 1939 or earlier, and Lower Allston's mostly Victorian single- and multi-family houses date from about 1890 to the 1920s. The median year built is 1942 in Allston and 1956 in Brighton, where almost a third of homes went up between 1960 and 1999.

Rain, the Charles River and basement units

The city's 2016 Climate Ready Boston report named Allston and Brighton among the neighborhoods with the largest land areas expected to be hit by stormwater flooding: about 200 acres, or 7% of their land, in a 10-year, 24-hour storm by the 2030s to 2050s. Coastal flooding is a smaller worry for now, with only 190 of almost 75,000 residents exposed even in the report's 36-inch sea level rise scenario.

The longer-term risk comes along the Charles. A later city study warned that with 21 inches of sea level rise, expected around the 2050s, flooding in Charlestown could reach the Charles River by going around the New Charles River Dam, which would put Allston at risk. For basement apartments, the plumbing defense against storm backups is a backwater valve on any fixture below the top of the nearest sewer manhole cover; the building owner installs and maintains it. BWSC also suggests a floating floor-drain plug. Our emergency plumber page covers what to do while water is coming in.